Washington | The fear is palpable. Bernie Sanders is back in the game.

Youthful waves of ultra-progressive supporters have pushed the ornery, self-proclaimed socialist senator from Vermont to the top of Democrat poll rankings this week, overtaking Joe Biden just days out from the opening Iowa caucus that will set the tone for this year's bitter party nomination battle.

The Sanders surge has triggered alarm and doom across the party's establishment, which has been yearning for three long years to reverse what it regards as the aberrant horror of Donald Trump's 2016 win and restore to the White House a centrist, politically and economically moderate president in the mould of Barack Obama or Bill Clinton.

In the way stands a reborn Sanders and his loyal base, who four years ago came close to upending Hillary Clinton's bid for the nomination and to this day remain convinced he would have beaten Trump in a head-to-head contest.

Yet in 2020 many fear the Senator's fierce anti-corporate populism and eye-popping tax-and-spending plans will drag the party so far to the left he'll end up gifting Trump an unthinkable second term. The President, it's said, is praying for a Sanders nomination.

And why wouldn't he? Americans would be choosing between the populist they now know versus the one they don't.

“They’re about to make all the same mistakes we made,” an Australian political operative who was intimately involved in Labor’s failed 2019 election campaign told AFR Weekend during a visit to Washington DC this week.

Within days, the Iowa caucuses will deliver the first hard verdict on a tightly balanced field of Democrat front-runners. Pretty much anything is still possible. But all the focus right now is on whether Sanders comes out on top.

As per long-standing tradition in American politics, it's the voters of Iowa who get the first say.

As they did four years ago, when their choices granted early leads to Clinton and Trump, citizens of the midwestern state's rolling hills and farmlands will again brave sub-zero temperatures on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) to gather in schools, public halls and even suburban living rooms to select their candidate for the nomination.

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While the rest of the country grumbles at the disproportionate level of influence Iowa has in determining who gets to be president, there’s no escaping that it matters a great deal.

Seven of the past nine Democrats who went on to claim their party’s nomination won in Iowa.

Seven of the past nine Democrats who went on to claim their party’s nomination won in Iowa. A win there puts candidates on the map. It generates a slew of media storylines that carry campaigns to the subsequent February battlegrounds of New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina before "Super Tuesday" in early March.

Iowa can gift its winner what George HW Bush described in 1980 – when he won the state during his first attempt at the Republican nomination – as “Big Mo”, or momentum.

But more importantly, Monday’s vote will bring to an end the party’s phony war after more than 12 long months of campaigning. There is no longer anywhere to hide.

The field narrows

From a field that, at one point in mid-2019, numbered more than 24 candidates, Democrats must decide from a group of less than half a dozen serious remaining contenders whether one can become the dragon-slayer they hope can defeat Trump.

The group includes Sanders and former vice-president Biden, as well as left-leaning Massachussetts senator Elizabeth Warren, and the moderates' favourites Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana mayor, and Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota. Former New York mayor and billionaire Mike Bloomberg is another big player, though he isn't contesting any of the early races.

At some point before the Democratic National Convention concludes in early July, one of those names will become the party's pick for president.

But above all, Iowa will begin to answer the fundamental question that has bedevilled Democrats for most of the past year – should they fight Trump in 2020 on a campaign of restoration or revolution, as many in the US have framed the choice?

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Can the restive progressive base of the party and its demands for dramatic changes to American capitalism and welfare prevail over the more traditional centrist wing, which sees Trump as a fluke to be corrected with a return to a steady Obama-like figure?

Trump came to power by tearing down the Republican establishment. Many Democrats believe they should now follow his lead. Others want to adopt a small-target strategy and hope enough “never Trumpers” – or disaffected Republicans – swing their way.

Iowa may give the revolutionaries a head start in answering that question.

As he did in 2016, Sanders is giving establishment Democrats heartburn with his big-ticket promises of free healthcare and university tuition, a “Green New Deal” tax and spending plans bolted to a resolutely anti-Wall Street populism.

On trade, Sanders has made it clear he will out-Trump Trump.

And the President knows it. Audio was leaked this week of a 2018 conversation Trump had with one of the players in the impeachment saga, Lev Parnas.

"You know, I got 20 per cent of [the] Bernie vote [in 2016], people don't realise that, because of trade, because he's a big trade guy," Trump said. "He basically says we're getting screwed on trade, and he's right. I'm worse than he is, but we can do something about it. I don't know if he could have."

The audio was pretty much a dream endorsement for Sanders, and adds to recent high-profile declarations of support from leading progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and popular West Coast podcaster Joe Rogan.

Making his move

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It seems to explain his recent rise in the polls. For the first time Sanders has jumped to the lead in several important battlegrounds, including in California and New Hampshire.

In Iowa, he now leads Biden with 23.8 per cent support versus 20.2 per cent, according to tracking polls published by Real Clear Politics. Next is Mayor Pete, followed by Senator Warren, who are on 15.8 per cent and 14.6 per cent respectively.

The polls suggest Sanders also stands a chance of finishing first or second in the February 22 Nevada primary. And even though he’s trailing Biden in the February 29 South Carolina race, Sanders is well placed to perform at the decisive Super Tuesday contests on March 3, when more than a dozen states vote – including California, which has the largest delegate trove in the country.

Bernie Sanders has slowly reeled in frontrunner Joe Biden's lead in polls. AP

None of this has been cheered by establishment Democrats, not least because Sanders isn't a member of the party.

They worry he will undo the hard work of moderate Democrats who fought and won a slew of seats in the 2018 midterms by appealing to suburban middle-American voters and conservatives who dislike Trump.

They also fear Sanders will become yet another “big target” progressive for Trump to destroy – much like how Boris Johnson dismantled UK Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, or even Scott Morrison’s unexpected takedown of Bill Shorten.

“Our concern is not that Sanders will potentially win the nomination and enact his policy agenda,” says Ryan Pougiales, senior political analyst at Third Way, a DC-based think tank associated with the moderate wing of the Democrat Party.

“We believe Sanders is very likely to lose and hand Trump four more years in the White House," he tells AFR Weekend.

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Not only does Sanders threaten to alienate mainstream Democrats, Pougiales points to political research that suggests a Sanders nomination will equally motivate Republicans to become more engaged in the battle to stop a self-avowed socialist from taking over the country.

Groups such as Third Way have published polling research that shows strong resistance from traditional Democrats to big-ticket promises such as medicare-for-all, one of the pillars of the Sanders and Warren campaigns.

“The Democrats did a great job in 2018 of winning house races and governors’ races in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia and elsewhere by winning over voters in these suburban communities who may have in the past voted Republican," says Pougiales.

“But we brought them into the Democrat tent by focusing on commonsense kitchen-table issues. And that’s just not the agenda that Bernie is running on.”

A question of broad appeal

Todd Mariano, US director at Eurasia Group in Washington, questions whether Sanders will maintain his momentum after results come in for states where he's not expected to do well.

“The real question isn’t whether Bernie does well in Iowa and New Hampshire, but whether Bernie can broaden his appeal beyond those states so he has a real shot at the nomination,” Mariano tells AFR Weekend.

“Some of Bernie’s surge is coming at the expense of Elizabeth Warren and we don’t see him taking vote share away from Biden”.

It's a key point. Sanders is not a clear frontrunner in overall polls. Late on Friday, Sanders was on 22.5 per cent, materially behind Biden on 28.8 per cent. In third place was Warren, with 14.1 per cent, followed by Bloomberg on 8.5 per cent.

Mariano explains those numbers suggest Biden has plenty of scope to perform poorly in Iowa, New Hampshire and even Nevada and still remain competitive on Super Tuesday.

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By contrast, he says, "the path for nomination for Bernie is steep”.

“But he’s proving in 2020 again that he’s more durable and appealing than people give him credit for.”

Right now [Sanders is] the paragon of anti-establishment politics.

— Todd Mariano, US director at Eurasia Group

The counterargument favoured by Sanders supporters – such as filmmaker Michael Moore, who famously predicted Trump’s 2016 victory as early as mid-2015 – is that the Senator can beat Trump across the Rust Belt or "blue wall" seats that he unexpectedly stole from Democrats.

But that ignores another potential blind spot for Sanders. For all of Trump's unorthodoxy and establishment-busting rhetoric, he has actually built important alliances to broaden his base, particularly across groups such as conservative evangelical Christians.

“Bernie is a change candidate, Trump was a change candidate,” says Mariano. “There’s a lot of overlap in the types of voters they appeal to.

“But you’ll notice what Trump has done is ally himself to more traditional conservative voters in key ways, and that will be Bernie’s challenge – to really appeal to more moderate business-friendly Democrats in suburban areas in such a way that he could be more of a unity candidate.

“Right now he’s the paragon of anti-establishment politics.”

Heading off civil war

Which raises another fear likely to be exposed by next week's Iowa caucus. Can Democrats unify behind a single candidate or will they descend into civil war?

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One of the oft-mentioned scenarios is one in which Biden falters and opens the door to Bloomberg. Were that to happen, and Bloomberg went on to win the nomination, would Sanders supporters swing their weight behind a billionaire Wall Street guy? It's not at all clear that they would.

And that's part of the reason there's so much talk already of a messy brokered convention.

Brokered conventions, which take place when no single candidate wins a majority of pledged candidates from the state primaries, are not only rare, they run the risk of delegitimising whoever ends up prevailing.

The last one was at the 1952 DNC convention, and since the early 1970s only the 1976 Republican primary came close to being contested in that way.

Asked who moderates like Third Way believe can beat Trump, Pougiales avoids endorsing anyone in particular.

"We are very early in the primary process, we haven't started voting yet."

But the looming primary season will quickly test whether there's a path to victory. Trump's re-election in November is still far from certain, not least because his 2016 win was built on a small handful of narrow victories in key states. Replicating that won't be easy.

"A focus on commonsense kitchen table issues, things like healthcare costs, expanding economic opportunity, addressing climate change, all of those things are key," says Pougiales of what Democrats must do.

"It's absolutely true that there is broad-based support for increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations and rolling back the Trump tax cuts – that's something borne out in our research."

"Whether that means Democrats want to spend $US60 trillion ($90 trillion) [over a decade] on a suite of proposals, that is less clear."

"Among Americans, whether Democrat or Republicans, there is still a strong sense we need to be able to pay for what our candidates are proposing to do."

Iowa Democrats face a daunting choice. Do they return to what's worked for the party in the past? Or throw caution to the wind and give Sanders a run.

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Jacob GreberUnited States correspondentJacob Greber writes about American politics, economics and business from our Washington bureau. He was previously our economics correspondent based in Canberra. Connect with Jacob on Twitter. Email Jacob at jgreber@afr.com

More than 10,000 people poured into the nation's capital on the ninth day of protests over police brutality, but what awaited them was a city that no longer felt as if it was being occupied by its own country's military.

More than 10,000 people poured into the nation's capital on the ninth day of protests over police brutality, but what awaited them was a city that no longer felt as if it was being occupied by its own country's military.